Zapp! English Vocabulary & Pronunciation 2.10 - Describing Things

"keys...are made of this, and...so are knives and forks and spoons" — that's Donnie, working his way towards the word metal without ever saying it. That's the game in this episode. Two speakers describe seventeen everyday words, one at a time, and your job is to name each one before we do. It's the exact skill you need when the word disappears mid-sentence and you have to talk your way round it.

What you'll hear in this episode

Donnie takes the first set. He describes metal through keys, cutlery and car parts; leather by listing what he's wearing at that moment — shoes, belt, part of his bag; light with feathers and paper ("feathers is one example", which is the kind of slip real speakers make and nobody notices). For thick he builds a small argument: a winter scarf, a blanket, and then the complete works of William Shakespeare in one volume. His clue for handle is the neatest one in the episode: "So...the word hand is actually part of the word as well."

Tom takes the second set, describing shiny, bright, valuable, ordinary, pattern, plain and sharp. He's wearing sunglasses while he explains bright, and he defines valuable by admitting the opposite: "This word means that something is worth a lot of money. For example, I don't have many...things that are this word." His clue for sharp is pure understatement — "if a knife is not, this word...it is not a very good knife".

Between the two guessing rounds come the teaching sections, where we check the meanings with quick questions and then drill the pronunciation word by word, with beeps for you to repeat into. Blunt and thin arrive there as the opposites you're asked to supply yourself.

Quick facts

What you'll learn

Two things at once. First, the language of description: what something is made of, how heavy or thick it is, what its parts are called, whether it has a pattern on it. This is survival vocabulary. When you can't remember handle or blunt, you do what Donnie and Tom do here — describe the thing until the other person supplies the word.

Second, some English words are shorter than they look. The pronunciation sections make a point of it. Valuable is written with four vowels but said with three syllables: "Not /valju:əbəl/ but three syllables /valjəbəl/". Ordinary does the same thing. And in button, the spelling ends in -on but the sound is /ən/ — the same weak vowel you get at the end of metal and handle. Once you hear that pattern, a lot of English suddenly makes more sense.

There's also stress. Material is four syllables with the stress on the second; metal, heavy and shiny all take the stress on the first. Guessing-game listening trains something else again: you're following a description without knowing where it's going, which is exactly what happens in real conversation.

Vocabulary from the workbook

The workbook glossary gives you all seventeen words with phonemic transcription and a short definition:

• metal /metəl/ (noun) – iron, steel and aluminium are examples
• leather /leðə/ (noun) – the skin of animals like cows, dried and made into a material to make clothes and shoes etc.
• thick /θɪk/ (adjective) – the opposite to thin, with a wide distance between the edges
• buttons /bʌtənz/ (noun) – things on machines that we press to control them
• a handle /hændəl/ (noun) – something on a door which we use to open it
• shiny /ʃaɪnɪ/ (adjective) – reflects the light and looks very bright
• valuable /væljʊbəl/ (adjective) – has a lot of value or worth
• ordinary /ɔːdənəri/ (adjective) – not unusual, normal
• plain /pleɪn/ (adjective) – with no pattern
• blunt /blʌnt/ (adjective) – cannot cut something easily

Also included: heavy, light, thin, material, bright, pattern and sharp.

What's in the workbook

The unit opens with a short introduction and the instructions for both guessing rounds, then gives you the full transcript of every description Donnie and Tom record — useful if a clue goes past too fast — plus the meaning-and-pronunciation prompts with the stress notes written out.

After the glossary come three practice sections. Practice 1 gives you five sentences to tick or correct, and the errors are deliberately tempting: "It must have taken you a long time to read that book, it's very thin" and "I can't carry your bag it's very light". Practice 2 is a word-association task — you're given knives, aluminium, a car and have to supply the connecting word, then a belt, a bag, shoes, and so on. Practice 3 is pronunciation: sort material, valuable, heavy, ordinary, shiny and metal into three stress patterns marked with dots. Full answers are at the back.

This workbook comes with the Zapp! English all-in-one pack, which covers every episode in every series for €39.

Get the complete courseAll workbooks and audio — €39

Common questions

Is the audio scripted?

The descriptions Donnie and Tom give are unscripted — that's why you hear the pauses, the restarts and the occasional "hmm" where someone is hunting for a way to explain bright without saying bright. The teaching sections that set up the tasks and give the answers are scripted, so the instructions stay clear.

What level is this episode?

Level 2, from the Vocabulary and Pronunciation 2 pack. The words are everyday ones, but the listening asks you to follow a definition rather than recognise a single word.

Do I need the workbook to use the audio?

No — the audio is free and works on its own, including the answers. The workbook adds the transcript, the glossary with phonemics and the three practice exercises.

How long is it?

16 minutes 29 seconds, which makes it a reasonable single sitting. Repeating out loud after the beeps is the part most people skip and shouldn't.

Why practise the silent syllables?

Because valuable and ordinary are words learners often over-pronounce, and it's the fastest thing to fix. Say them in three syllables and you immediately sound closer to a native speaker.

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